ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN – APRIL 12: U.S. Vice President JD Vance speaks as Jared Kushner (L) and Steve Witkoff, Special Envoy for Peace Missions, listen during a news conference after a meeting with representatives from Pakistan and Iran on April 12, 2026 in Islamabad, Pakistan. The proposed meeting marks a rare direct engagement between senior U.S. and Iranian officials, as Washington and Tehran seek to advance stalled negotiations over Iran’s nuclear programme, with Pakistan serving as neutral ground amid persistent tensions between the two countries. (Photo by Jacquelyn Martin – Pool/Getty Images)
Getty Images
US President Donald Trump recently referred to Iran’s negotiating team as “very smart people.”
If you look at the details of the Memorandum of Understanding that Iran reached with the US, the Iranians do seem like they have the upper hand. In this widely criticized document, the US would begin lifting sanctions on Iran, Tehran would regain access to frozen funds worth $24 billion, and the US and regional allies would support Iran in a reconstruction plan worth $300 billion.
In exchange, Iran would need to allow international inspectors to resume access to nuclear enrichment sites (not just the nuclear sites) and will maintain the status quo of its nuclear program while parties negotiate a final agreement to stop further escalation. The MOU does not require Iran to dismantle its enrichment facilities and end enrichment altogether. Instead the issue of enrichment will be negotiated in the final deal.
According to the IAEA Iran has about 972 pounds of uranium that is enriched up to 60% purity. Any uranium enriched at above 20% is considered highly enriched, with above 90% considered weapons-grade.
But there already appear to be disagreements about one of the key sticking points—the inspections of Iran’s nuclear sites. In a public rebuke of International Atomic Energy Agency head Rafael Mariano Grossi, Iran has stated that inspections will only take place after a deal has been made not during negotiations.
Trump’s weak negotiating team
Part of the problem is Trump has placed his confidence in a team of negotiators that are not on the same level as their Iranian counterparts. Yet they have been tasked with negotiating one of the most complex types of agreements in diplomacy.
One of Trump’s key diplomatic envoys is Steve Witkoff, a successful businessman and real estate mogul, who is part of Trump’s inner circle. Witkoff has no career or background in nuclear policy, arms-control negotiations, Middle East diplomacy and no scientific or technical expertise in nuclear weapons or energy. Witkoff recently referred to the Strait of Hormuz as the “Gulf of Hormuz,” and admitted that his knowledge of the Middle East was “sketchy.”
Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who did play a role in negotiating the Abraham Accords during Trump’s first term, is also involved. While Kushner is an investor and businessman, his knowledge of nuclear agreements and technical issues remains limited. Israeli media figures have branded both Witkoff and Kushner “losers” for agreeing to the MOU.
Trump’s other negotiator, Vice President JD Vance has a similar level of expertise having worked as an attorney, a venture capitalist, a senator and with some experience in the US Marine Corps. Reportedly Vance was left out of the war room at Mar-a-Lago and privately opposed the war. He too has no background in Middle East diplomacy, nuclear weapons or arms control and no experience negotiating treaties.
This lack of nuclear technical fluency has proved to be problematic already. Trump’s negotiators would need to be knowledgeable about what enrichment levels mean, centrifuge types and numbers, uranium stockpile accounting, reactor fuel requirements and verification mechanisms. While a skilled negotiator would not need to be a nuclear scientist, they would need to know what types of concessions are meaningful, which ones are symbolic and which are easier to verify. A politically attractive agreement could fail later if the technical wording is weak.
It’s also not clear if Trump’s top negotiators understand who actually has the power to approve a deal in Iran and how decision-making works inside the regime. Trump clearly underestimated in the past just how powerful Iran’s Revolutionary Guards are (wrongly thinking that they would defect once the US initiated a bombing campaign). Since the war started, the Revolutionary Guards have consolidated power even further.
The director of non-proliferation policy at the Arms Control Association, Kelsey Davenport argued that Trump’s team’s “technical incompetence led the Trump administration to miss critical opportunities to engage Iran and recognize where Tehran was demonstrating flexibility.”
Critics claimed that Witkoff treated Tehran’s Research Reactor as if was evidence of a weapons pathway, when it is primarily a civilian research facility. The US team focused too much on the demand that Iran stop enriching uranium completely with Witkoff calling this a red line, rather than exploring technical limits that would reduce risk, such as allowing their civilian program to continue to save face.
Iran takes enormous national pride in their nuclear program. Therefore, eliminating it entirely is non-negotiable for the Iranians. Given Iran’s belief that they were exploited by colonial powers, Tehran sees this program as essential to its national identity and to achieving independence from foreign influence. A better solution would have been to focus on getting stronger IAEA inspections and locking in restrictions through verification.
The other issue is that the nuclear deal that the Obama administration achieved in 2015 took almost two years of painstaking negotiations. Nuclear talks often involve months of confidence building measures and verification arrangements. Trump’s team have approached the negotiation like a business deal, trying to achieve a breakthrough in 60 days. But nuclear agreements require slow technical bargaining.
Iran’s hardline negotiators
And what about the negotiators on the Iranian side? The top negotiators are Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister and Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf an Iranian politician and former Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps brigadier general, who has served as Iran’s Speaker of the Parliament since 2020. Both men are hardliners with much deeper subject matter and diplomatic experience than Witkoff, Kushner and Vance.
Araghchi spent years inside Iran’s foreign policy establishment and served as a senior nuclear negotiator for the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action during Obama’s administration. As such Araghchi has a strong understanding of the technical vocabulary of enrichment, sanctions relief and verification and knows what the regime’s limits are. Ghalibaf has decades of experience inside Iran’s security and political institutions, which alongside Araghchi ensures that their negotiation strategy is tightly linked to Iran’s security concerns.
While Ghalibaf is known as being more pragmatic than Araghchi, both men are aligned on the core objectives of the negotiations and are firmly committed to achieving them. Vance, Witkoff and Kushner lack the same level of ideological commitment to the outcome of the negotiations.
And though Vance keeps telling the press that progress has been achieved, there are many unknowns. At the moment, the scope of Iran’s nuclear program remains unclear, as there is no defined process for eliminating its highly enriched uranium or details about what US priorities are for verification.
Ultimately the emerging agreement highlights the asymmetry in the negotiations process. Iran’s team brings deep institutional memory and technical fluency in nuclear diplomacy. The US is relying on rapid deal-making instincts rather than expertise in arms-control and nuclear weapons. This all doesn’t bode well for the US’s ability to secure a durable and enforceable agreement.